![\"\u201cSurreal,](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2013\/03\/C8-StrathmanWBpanomilky.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cSurreal, but stunningly beautiful.\u201d Photograph by Will Strathmann \u201913<\/p><\/div>\n
Strathmann captured that beauty in the panoramic photograph shown above. He was one of 10 students, faculty and staff in the Bates workshop held at West Branch Pond Camps, nearly four hours north of campus and some 10 miles east of Kokadjo, Maine.<\/p>\n
Leading the workshop was Babak Tafreshi, a journalist, photographer and champion of the night sky. Born in Iran, Tafreshi was one of the artists in Starstruck<\/em>, the 2012 Bates Museum of Art exhibition that was one of the first to treat astrophotography as an artistic genre.<\/p>\n Photograph by Babak Tafreshi<\/p><\/div>\n “Being in the right place at the right time.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Images by Tafreshi, who photographed the circular \u201cfisheye\u201d image above and whose clients include National Geographic<\/em>, frame the night sky with the ground-level landscape, a genre called landscape astrophotography. \u201cThe trick,\u201d he says, \u201cis being in the right place at the right time.\u201d Hence the workshop location: First West Branch Pond, ringed by mountains and trees, for that framing effect.<\/p>\n Still better is its freedom from the light pollution that obscures the stars in so much of the developed world. With an open sky for three of the workshop\u2019s four nights, the lack of light pollution \u201clet us see the Milky Way very stunningly,\u201d says Tafreshi, as well as usually invisible phenomena such as zodiacal light, a faint heavenly glow around sunrise and sunset caused by space dust reflecting the sun\u2019s rays.<\/p>\n Sacrificing shut-eye for shutter time, the group shot all night and spent the daytime editing their digital images. Tafreshi explains that landscape astrophotography can be done with quite ordinary, if judiciously chosen, gear \u2014 namely good tripods and fast, wide-angle lenses. \u201cYou need to get the use of any photon arriving at your [camera\u2019s] sensor,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In between shooting, editing and catnaps, the Bates group enjoyed the hospitality of camp proprietors Eric Stirling \u201997 and his wife, Mildred Stirling. The business has been in Eric\u2019s family since 1910. \u201cI would go back just for the food,\u201d says Megan Lubetkin \u201916 of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who does time-lapse and star-trail photography.<\/p>\n But all in all, there would be plenty to go back for. \u201cIt was just so serene,\u201d says Lubetkin. \u201cThe lake was so pristine, there was no one else around, and it was just untouched. It was perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n In October, singer Dev\u2019s concert rider asked for cough drops, sugar-free Red Bull and beef jerky.<\/p>\n Faculty composer Hiroya Miura premiered a work based on cosmic radiation patterns.<\/p>\n Trumpeter James Jhun \u201916 played a fanfare for President Spencer\u2019s arrival at the Inaugural Reception.<\/p>\n Artist-in-residence Dawoud Bey will set up studio in a former Lewiston mill building during Short Term.<\/p>\n A dance by professor Rachel Boggia incorporates video of her father training a horse.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nArts & Culture Facts<\/h3>\n
\nRhythm-n-Roots<\/h3>\n